PHILADELPHIA – The coach, hand-picked by Michael Jordan, won’t dare tell him. The teammates, cowed by the legend, won’t let him know. None of the people around Jordan will tell him what he needs to hear. So I’m here to say it for them:

Michael, stop being such a ball hog!

Just because Jordan is surrounded by so little talent on his new team, the Wizards, doesn’t excuse him taking a staggering 30 percent of his team’s shots (Nick Van Exel is second in the NBA at 27 percent) and leading the league by averaging 31.68 field-goal attempts per 48 minutes (Allen Iverson is second at 30.87), going into last night’s game against the Sixers here.

The post-championship Jordan resembles the pre-championship Jordan in this respect: He shoots too frequently and trusts his teammates too little.

Jordan, unaccustomed to losing, lost it at the expense of teammates after the lowly Cleveland Cavaliers tattooed his lowlier Washington Wizards (Generals?) 94-75 on Tuesday night.

“I think we stink,” Jordan said. “I don’t see anyone covering my back as everyone probably expected me to cover theirs. That’s something I’m not going to live too much with. These guys are young enough to step forward and make an effort.”

Nothing inspires effort the way inclusion does. Nothing curtails it like starving hungry shooters. Jordan didn’t need to tell teammates they stink. He shows them by turning them into spectators.

Jordan apologists will excuse his quick trigger by belaboring the lack of talent around him. Still, for a guy who no longer is a very efficient shooter, Jordan jacks too many shots.

Among the NBA’s top 10 scorers, Jordan (averaging 25.4 points per game) has the second-lowest field-goal percentage (.402). Only Antoine Walker (.384) has a lower one, and even he is a far more efficient shooter than Jordan. But points per shot (PPS) is a far more telling indicator of shooting efficiency than the archaic field-goal percentage, a stat that assigns equal value to two-point field goals and three-pointers.

During his postgame rant in Cleveland, Jordan said: “The disappointing part is that there are guys capable of doing it and they just aren’t, for whatever reason. If they can’t make a basket or two, so what? At least they shouldn’t lack on the defensive end or rebounding. I don’t sense that urgency coming from this team.”

Any basketball coach at any level can attest the best way to motivate a player to give his best defensively and on the boards is to reward him by letting him shoot. Doug Collins is the coach of the Wizards, but it’s Jordan who exerts the most influence.

Jordan’s return, however boring, remains good for the league and Wizards. He’s virtually an automatic sellout. His second comeback in no way taints his legacy. He was the driving force behind the Bulls’ six NBA championships. ESPN’s Sports Century series named him the Athlete of the Century, even though a pair of Jims (Thorpe and Brown) had more versatile resumes.

Whatever Jordan does now shouldn’t change anybody’s opinion on where he ranks among all-time greats, any more than what he did with the Bulls should alter opinions on what he’s doing for the Wizards: hoisting too many shots.